Strife in the Muslim World
Smoke billowed through the air, covering the spectators in the noxious fumes of burning polyester. The flames greedily licked at the red, white, and blue, leaving black ashes to drift away over the heads of the protesters, adding yet another country to the growing list of Muslim nations recently showing anti-American sentiment. According to an article by Peter Baker and Mark Landler in the New York Times, international relations between the United States and much of the Muslim world stand on shaky ground after an anti-Islam video was uploaded to YouTube. The video aroused the anger of thousands around the world, leading to the invasion of a U.S. Embassy, among other establishments, leaving 4 Americans dead in Libya and many others dead and wounded throughout the Middle East.
This bout of primarily anti-American sentiment over the American-made video has brought on much discussion about the ties that the United States has with Libya and much of the Middle East ever since the “Arab Spring.” For those who do not know or remember, 2010 announced the start of the “Arab Spring,” where thousands upon thousands of citizens in Arab countries banded together through social networks to overcome oppressive dictatorships and autocracies. Many of these nations rose triumphant, though shakily, out of the gravel, willing to start anew. As a result, the Obama administration pledged to give aid for the reconstruction and spread of democracy in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Libya, among others. However, the recent protests, the actions of a few, have sparked debates as to whether the U.S. should decrease involvement in these countries until further notice.
These straining ties fit nicely into the recent graph theory taught in our networks class. By picturing the United States and the Middle-Eastern/North African countries mentioned above as nodes, one can view the attempt to give aid and promote democracy as creating edges from the U.S. to these countries. Categorizing these edges as strong or weak ties is difficult as far too numerous factors come into play, but we can at least generalize that, pre-video, they were generally positive ties. What is interesting to see is that, based on what has happened already, if more and more people in the Muslim world see the video and get caught up in mob mentality, the ties between the U.S. and these countries will start to become more and more negative, thus growing more and more unstable. As the positive ties become negative, many Americans would most definitely push towards ending U.S. involvement in the Arab countries, thus slimming the chances to make the ties positive again. And that’s the most fascinating thing to keep an eye on in the future. Can conflict erase edges? Could such negativity towards the U.S. from a people, not a government, actually make the aid, the edge, disappear altogether? Will the U.S. keep a calm and collected image during such protests, or respond harshly? As Baker and Landler state in their article, “the trade-offs of such choices are stark. Pulling back on American involvement in these countries would undercut the ability to build cultural bridges that in theory diminish the sort of hostility now vividly on display.” In the end, only the future will tell.
– SamuelJackman